I recently read about the 'String of Pearls' formation in Altman's book. From the photos in that book, I couldn't grasp what he meant by String of Pearls. Can someone please spare a few moments to explain it to me or direct me to a good resource.

ThanksGP

Last edited by Martijn (admin) on Sun Dec 05, 2010 7:15 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Title improvement)

If it's fig. 9.9 in Altman's "The Palmistry Workbook" look at the area under the middle finger and between the middle and ring. Also very noticible in the space between close to the end of head line and up to heart line along side the health line.

Patti wrote:If it's fig. 9.9 in Altman's "The Palmistry Workbook" look at the area under the middle finger and between the middle and ring. Also very noticible in the space between close to the end of head line and up to heart line along side the health line.

Respected PattijiNamaste,

please describe above in detail, what you want say because nothing is mentioned in above book as state above.Do you want to blend 'String of Pearl' with quotation?

I'm sorry Upendrasingh, I'm not sure what you mean by "You have not blend it".

I really haven't much more information. Maybe someone else can share more indepth information or research.

I have seen the flow of the rows of ridges disturbed every now and then in people's hands. The people I've seen it on have usually been stressed out over a long period or have chronic illnesses that wear them down physically and emotionally.

Occasionally, I have seen it on people's hands who look strong and healthy. I notice that Altman writes that it's on people that are neurotic. When you do a Google search for "string of pearls" palmistry, you can see his newest book. There it seems he's correlated it to sex offenders. I just read that earlier after I posted.

It would be a good idea to keep that in mind when we come across them in people's palms. Although I don't think I could come right out and ask someone if they had sex offender tendancies.

If it's physical illness related to start - then the breaking down of the ridges might relate to a similar breaking down of the mental capacities in some way - leading to neurosis of some sort. Although when you look up the definition of neurosis, it says it's not physical or organ related.

The term "string of pearls" in regards to the break down of the skin ridges has been around a number of years. I'm pretty sure I read about it prior to Altman's books. I was thinking Lori Reid mentioned them.

I recently read about the 'Striing of Pearls' formation in Altman's book. From the photos in that book, I couldn't grasp what he meant by Striing of Pearls. Can someone please spare a few moments to explain it to me or direct me to a good resource.

ThanksGP

Hello GoodPalmist,

Yes, you're right to wonder about this.

It is quite funny to notice that Altman has described his comment about the 'string of pearls' in all his books - starting from 1984 (The Palmistry Workbook) to 2009 (Palmistry: The Universal Guide). But during the past 2 decades Altman never really explained how one can recognize this phenomon from his example... nor any other hand!

Okay Patti, I will try to do that - by shareing a few observations + a few more details from other sources:

NOTICE: Regarding Altman's example:

In the mount of Venus area one can not see any ridge pattern; but it is unclear why Altman exactly presented that illustration. So Patti, your right: the areas that you marked could be described as an example of 'mild ridge dissociation'.

But one could even wonder if Altman'ss illustration shows really an example of 'ridge dissociation'... because one really needs to use some specified 'criteria' before one can speak of this phenomenon: otherwise a print with a poor quality could easily get confused with 'ridge dissocation'.

2 - But the best source I have seen so far is the book 'Dermatoglyphics in Schizophrenics' - by Amrita Bagga (1989). See pages 200-202:http://books.google.com/books?id=xT6To27M_6UC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

And Bagga describes also a method to discriminate 'mild-', 'moderate-', and 'acute ridge dissociation' examples - depending upon the degree of dissociaton. (For example: when a triradius can not be identified, then one could speak of a 'moderate' example, though there are other criteria including the size of the area involved, etc.)

All these names basically refer to same phenomenon, and it appears that an earlier schizophrenia study from 1962 (http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/180/3/215.abstract) was one of the very first studies where 'ridge dissociation' was mentioned.

I hope this has been helpful to understand the phenomenon of the 'stringle-of-pearls' - again, the 1973 article present two much examples of (moderate) 'ridge dissociation'.

I can't find anything in Lori Reid's or any of the other author's books that I thought may have mentioned String of Pearls, so it might have been from Nathaniel's earlier book that I first became aware of the term.

In David Brandon Jones 1981 (1986 US edition) "Practical Palmistry" he has this illustration:

Respected Martijn and PattyjiNamasteTo malformed ridges “String of pearls” analogy is given by Dr. Eugene Scheimann, M.D. and Nathaniel Altman but it is given in book of Noel Jaquin in his book ‘The Hand Speaks- Your Health, Your Sex , Your Life’ for chronically diseases published in 1941.

Upendrasingh Bhadoriya wrote:Respected Martijn and PattyjiNamasteTo malformed ridges “String of pearls” analogy is given by Dr. Eugene Scheimann, M.D. and Nathaniel Altman but it is given in book of Noel Jaquin in his book ‘The Hand Speaks- Your Health, Your Sex , Your Life’ for chronically diseases published in 1941.

Namaste Upendrasingh!What a great collection of prints with diagnosed cases. Does he use the phrase "string of pearls"? I see on page 84 he says "dot like pieces". Thanks for calling my attention to this book, in the process of looking through it for this topic, I came across something else I had been looking for!

Upendrasingh Bhadoriya wrote:Respected Martijn and PattyjiNamasteTo malformed ridges “String of pearls” analogy is given by Dr. Eugene Scheimann, M.D. and Nathaniel Altman but it is given in book of Noel Jaquin in his book ‘The Hand Speaks- Your Health, Your Sex , Your Life’ for chronically diseases published in 1941.

Hello U.B.,

Thanks for sharing your observation regarding Jaquin's work. Can you please tell us on which page(s) of the Jaquin's book you are referring to?

Beryl Hutchinson in "Your Life in Your Hands", (1967) in chapter IV (pg 223) mentions the breaking up of the skin ridges. She refers back to not only Charlotte Wolff and Noel Jaquin writing about the "breaking up of the rythmn of ridges". She says Jaquin's book "The Hand Speaks" has 'probably the best illustrations of his findings'.

She says that Purkinje (she spelled it Purkenje) also mentioned the breakdown of the skin ridges in 1823 and that Galton noticed the condition, too. Noel Jaquin was the first to connect them with disease.

I think the term "string of pearls" was coined along the way and caught on in conversation among palmists before written in Altman's books. He said in 'palmistry' it's known as "string of pearls". I checked his list of references to see his possible source.

Reminds me of how Johnny Fincham and other Handreading Cyber Cafe members called his Passion Line a Pervy line and that's how it was discussed for some time before it settled into a less offending name. Someday the first published place for it to be found will be his books, but in people's notes and computer archives it was around quite a few years prior.

<edit> Purkinje's work is translated into English from Latin in the book "Dermatoglyphics, Science in Transition" 1991.

Last edited by Patti on Mon Dec 06, 2010 8:02 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : update)

In Scheimann's "A Doctor's Guide to Better Health Through Palmistry" he mentions the term "string of pearls" on pages 73 and 74. "disassociated or ill-formed ridges known as "string of pearls". This was published in 1969, so the term was already in use then in the palmistry community.

I am surprised that my simple question has triggered such an active discussion.

I'd like to add a question - if I may - to this thread.

Have expert palmists - during the course of their readings - been able to rely on research findings (Bagga and others) or is there a lot left to be researched before conclusive correlations can be determined ?